Determine if a String is a valid date before parsing

Question

I have this situation where I am reading about 130K records containing dates stored as String fields. Some records contain blanks (nulls), some contain strings like this: \'

Answer 1

you could use split to determine which format to use

String[] parts = date.split("-");
df = (parts.length==3 ? format1 : format2);

That assumes they are all in one or the other format, you could improve the checking if need be